Asian workers now dominate Silicon Valley tech jobs

Asian-Americans make up half of the Bay Area's technology workforce, and their double-digit employment gains came from jobs lost among white tech workers, according to Census Bureau data.

The dramatic shift in the changing composition of the high-tech workforce represents a new generation of homegrown and imported workers drilled in science, technology, engineering and math studies. But the shift in workplace demographics -- at least among tech companies -- fails to reflect the gains of California's Hispanic and Latino population, which lost ground in tech jobs along with African-Americans. "It's the new world -- a world in which whites are not the majority," said Jan English-Lueck, associate dean of the college of social sciences at San Jose State University, who is also co-founder of the Silicon Valley Cultures Project. "Other people are being displaced." The percentage of Asian tech workers grew from 39 percent in 2000 to just more than 50 percent in 2010 in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties combined, according to Census Bureau statistics. At the same time, white workers saw their more than 50 percent majority of tech jobs in 2000 fall to nearly 41 percent.